


Argument of the Perigee

by stephmuji



Category: Firefly, Milliways
Genre: David Shen, Gen, Sallie Reynolds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephmuji/pseuds/stephmuji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ro said that I couldn't write a fic where Mal worked for the Alliance, and have it end up with where the show starts. This was years and years ago by this point, and here is what exists, as I clean it up and make it more solid. No guarantees I'll ever finish it? But if it interests you, take a look.</p>
<p>
  <i>The Argument of the Perigee (w) is defined as the angle within the satellite orbit plane that is measured from the Ascending Node (W) to the perigee point (p) along the satellite's direction of travel.</i>
</p>
<p>"That only matters to the people on the Rim."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tobacco and David

It has been speculated that Shadow is the closest a terraformed planet has ever come to Earth-that-Was. Malcolm Reynolds' opinion has always been that Shadow surpassed the antiquated rule of thumb long ago, all remnants of the planet who gave birth to his species being 'history textbooks' containing more myth and conjecture than fact.

This opinion does nothing to diminish his currently raging desire to procrastinate from mucking out the stables. Throwing the pitchfork against the stable wall with a clank as it falls over, Malcolm - Mal to his friends, ever since he was six or seven - smiles at the other boy in the stables. Apparently this is all the motivation required, and Mal swings up on his horse, the other boy already astride his, and they exit the barn shouting encouragement at the other to ride faster.

It is another twenty minutes before Mal and his friend - David Shen, a hired hand on the Reynolds Ranch - slow their horses to a stop along the split rail fence which outlines with whitewashed oak the edges of the property of Mal’s mother Sallie.

"I know I buried that _goushi_ somewhere..." David dismounts smoothly, immediately making swift examinations of each gate pillar.

"How in the good gorram did you find real tobacco? Didn't even think it still grew on Shadow."

"Doesn't," David interjects, rooting at the base of the fifth pillar and raising a small plastic bag in triumph. "Bought it off the spice trader from Bernadette that landed this morning."

Mal finally dismounts, gangly sixteen-year-old legs carrying him over to David and his bag of treasure conspiratorially. "Bought, or stole?"

"Trifle me not with details," is the reply. Reaching into a pocket of the burlap satchel slung over his horse's back, he finds his prize - a small stack of white paper squares, nearly as valuable as the dried strips of plant stolen from a Bernadette spice trader. It's a quick slice of Mal's pocketknife to open the tobacco pouch. It's about an hour and a half to smoke the entire stash - coughing, hacking, grinning like fools.

Mal's mother and David's father were waiting for them in the stables by the time they thought about riding home. Mal got sent to bed with no supper; David got sent to bed with bright welts across his back.

Neither regretted that afternoon. They rarely regretted anything they did together, no matter if it got them in trouble with their parents or with the district police. Not that they could either be considered something as harsh as ‘delinquents’. With Mal’s mother Sallie being as recognizable as she was, most times her son was just returned to the Reynolds Ranch. The community usually recognized that he would get punished harder with her than anything anyone else could do regardless. David was a different case - he obeyed Sallie, sure, as much as he every did his own parents, even. The problems came out of the fact that nobody seemed to remember (in David’s mind) that he was his own man, and capable of making his own decisions. For better or for worse.


	2. They Lost.

"They lost."

"What in God's name are you talking about, David?"

David turned on the commscreen in the kitchen of Sallie's house, transferring it from the living room where he had been trouncing Mal yet again in a game of checkers. Sallie pulled offer her apron and folded it while staring beyond David to the local newsfeed:

"Hadden Technologies announced today their acquisition of twelve hundred more acres of farmland under the auspices of their new Green Shadow project, an agricultural program destined to augment the food production of Shadow's third quadrant by seventy-five percent -- "

"The lawsuit," Sallie starts, snapping off the feed in the kitchen. "I thought the injunction for the Arroway farm lasted until the end of the month."

"It did. On paper." David torques his wrists one after the other, a habitual tell of his aggravation. "Soybeans. Soy. Rutting. Beans. That family don't know the first thing 'bout farmin' nothin' 'sides corn and wheat, and Hadden bought them out so's to order 'em to grow something they think'll fail in the ground and kick 'em off the land."

Sallie, for an utter lack of anything useful to say, turned back to her stovetop to feign looking around momentarily for a serving spoon. "I really thought they had a shot with the lawsuit with the local powers."

"Well that would require the local powers to not be a group of evil heartless -- "

"Ma! Lilly just waved!" Mal calls, walking in the kitchen. "Can I go have dinner over at the Jacksons'?"

" -- monsters."

Mal shot David a look and turned back to his mother. "Please? I'll do the stables myself tomorrow even."

"Yes," David adds, not without his own ulterior motives at hearing Mal's offer. "Let 'im go."

"I just don't understand why Lilly can't come over here -- "

"For dinner, anyway," David throws out. Mal punches him in the shoulder hard enough to hurt.

Sallie continues, " -- for a change. I don't care if she is the mayor's daughter, she's dating my son and should show her face around here sometime."

Stepping closer to his mother, Mal starts trying on his best pout, "You know she would if she could. It's just complicated."

"Having a _hun dan_ for a father usually does inhibit things," David sneered at the comment, and with a speed that startled Sallie, Mal reaches and twists David's arm behind him, pulling upward enough to make David arch backward slightly.

Leaning inward, "Do not talk ill on my girlfriend's family."

"Don't tell me you like the man," David retorts, wincing at Mal's continued hold.

"Don't like you half the time; don't hear me complainin'." Mal lets go of David, looking to his mother expectantly.

"...You are absolutely doin' the stalls tomorrow."

" _Xiexie_ Ma," Mal grins, giving her a quick hug.

"Just go, you big baby," Sallie laughs, pushing him off. Another glare directed at David, and Mal clamors up the stairs to his room to change.

"...monsters," David mumbles, and he leaves the kitchen quickly thereafter, in the opposite direction than the one Mal took to pass his friend by.


End file.
